After the successful start in 2012 under the theme 'Inspiring Hope', TEDxSanaa came back in 2013 with the theme 'Actions Matter', which is driven by a burning desire to change to the better, triggering action through ideas inspired by the Yemeni people. Actions can not only bey in the form of physical labor, but through spreading ideas, creating a spirit of innovation and creativity, and pushing the boundaries of what is possible.

The speaker lineup was mainly young, energetic Yemenis with passion and ideas that involve action that matters.

The team of volunteers has grown tremendously since last year and in recognition of their vital roles in helping out with this year's event, we decided to put all their names here on this official page:

Speakers

Speakers may not be confirmed.
Check event website for more information.

Fathi Shams Aldeen

Fathi Shamsaldeen is a graduate of Brunel University with first class Honours.
He is an excellence award winner among the UK graduate multimedia projects form the Computer Art Magazine and the SKY green award winner at new designer’s exhibition in 2008.
He is now pursuing an ambitious career as a BBC multimedia Journalist and an editorial producer in political programmes in London as well as new media expert and trainer.
Founder and creativity director of INTE-PIX Media, which is media and new media studies and training centre in London.
Fathi believes that media has become the hallmark of our times and must play a great role in leading change in the society and to its advancement.
Currently, he is a PhD student researching “The impact of Media & New media for shaping the political strategy” at the University of Leicester.
Fathi represented Yemen in many international conferences such as the “Democracies Emerging Conference” in Paris organised by The French Ministry of Foreign affairs.
He enjoys finding solutions to a problem and being part of the solution rather than the problem.

Thana Faroq

Thana Faroq is a young artist and street photographer, who was born
and raised in Yemen. She participated in several group photography
exhibitions in the United States where she had pursued her Bachelor’s
degree. In June 2013, Thana had her first independent photography
exhibition in Yemen titled: Street Photography: in the moment.
Because of her excellent academic experience and her early involvement
with community service in Yemen, Thana was selected at the age of
sixteen to attended one the United World Colleges in Canada where she
had finished high school education. Thana was later awarded another
scholarship and studied International Relations & Photography at Clark
University. She graduated this year and currently she works at
ResonateYemeni Organization.

Ammar Basha

Ammar Basha is a filmmaker from Yemen. After obtaining two diplomas as Animation film artist from India during 2005-2008, he won a scholarship for a Master program in cinematic arts in the Red Sea Institute for Cinematic Arts in Jordon. He graduated as a film director but his skills and expertise span different fields such as writing, cinematography, editing, sound and team management.
His short documentary “One day in the heart of the revolution” was the 2013 winner of the Eye to the heart festival organized by the American Islamic Congress in Boston, USA.
“The Last Hour”, a short fiction, earned him the ‘Best of the best’ prize at the Tehran international short films festival as well as at the Zaid University film festival in Abu Dhabi. In 2011, Ammar was the creator of Thawrat Shabab (Youth revolution) channel on YouTube.
He defines himself as a multicultural artist who is able to understand his community, Yemen and the world because of the extensive travelling he made and the insights he gained during the journeys and the worlds and cultures he came across during his journeys. Ammar believes Yemen, if the right factors are provided, can have an important impact and potential in the film making and producing industry.

Sama'a Al-Hamdani

Sama'a Al-Hamdani writes the blog Yemeniaty, which covers a range of topics on Yemen, focusing specifically on women’s issues. She has published articles in The National (UAE), MENAsource (The Atlantic Council Blog), Fikra Forum (The Washington Institute Journal), Yemen Observer, Yemen Times, News Yemen, Yemen Today Magazine, Le Voix du Yemen, Almasdaronline, Tabseer, and several academic Journals . She holds a certificate in Video Journalism from Al Arabiya news channel. She also appeared on Aljazeera Stream and was a guest on The Voice of Russia Radio and RTTV America. Sama'a is a member of the National Press Club (NPC) in Washington DC. She provides political analysis on Yemen and has spoken at several events, most importantly with Chatham House in the UK and the State Department in Washington DC. She has a bachelor’s degree in Religion and Peace studies, and a minor in Women’s Studies from the George Washington University. She is also a member of Theta Alpha Kappa, a national honor society for Religious Studies, and the recipient of the Harry Yeide Prize for Excellence in the field of Religious Studies. Sama'a currently lives in Washington, DC.

Abduljaleel Heidar

Abduljaleel Heidar is a presenter and he is passionate about interacting with people and the public.
He has graduated from the Media department and is planning on pursuing an MA on new media. Abduljaleel participated and presented in various festivals principally in Sana’a, he is a professional in marketing artistic and national works and hosting television programmes. He was the host of the Yemen Shabab Ramadan 2012 show “Youth Hour” as well as being the program director for the television show “The night of Power”, which documented and showed to the public the challenges and difficulties that cancer patients suffered in Yemen.
Abduljaleel volunteers at different charities associations and is a marketing and media consultant to several youth initiatives. He enjoys sports and spreading ideas and concept that are helpful to society. Abduljaleel aims at leaving a trace and transforming the Yemeni media world to the better.

Dina Farea

Dina Farea lived in both Arab and Western countries, this led her to witness firsthand the benefit of the peaceful co-existence of different cultures and psychologies. She thinks that it was this experience that stirred in her first the curiosity and then the passion for psychology.
Dena graduated from the College of Dentistry in the University of Sana'a in June 2004 and worked as a dental physician for the period 2004 to 2009. Then, in 2010, she studied preliminaries to master and decided to work as a volunteer at the Youth Economic Development Center for which she was chosen as the best volunteer for two consecutive months.
Dena believes her love for volunteering mainly stems from her love for team work. Dena, who’s also a lecturer in NLP, went to various human development courses, especially courses on Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP), as well as courses related with the lives and human behavior and psychology .
In 2011, she won the International Training license from the Canadian Centre in Sana’a as well as from Waldenburg International College. In 2012 she gave courses of human development on the topics of self discovery and self discipline. Dena believes that the basis of change begins from within each human being. She is currently preparing to open her own dental clinic.

Eithah Almaghafi

Eithah Ali Almaghafi was born on October 14th 1987. She is a graduate of Arts and Translation, University of Science and Technology. Her great interest in child education got her the chance in February 2009 to be the youngest primary teacher trainer at Hornby Summer School- British Council.
At the same time, she started working with children’s books at Yemen Book Shop the main distributor of Oxford University Press. In April 2009, she became a member of the Global Change Makers – Yemen; one of the British Council projects that ended in late 2011. As a global change maker, she participated in taking the action of I Love My Book campaign that was established by the Global Change Makers.
In 2011, by the ending of the GCM project, the team decided to hand in the campaign responsibilities to Eithah to continue the campaign with a new chosen team. Since August 2011, she has been the team leader of the campaign that continued working in corporation with Life Makers Forum. In February 2012, she started to work as a primary English teacher at Yemen International School, and in June of the same year she became an English instructor at Exceed Language Centre.
Eithah’s biggest dream is to be a part of the national process of raising awareness on the importance of reading.

Mohamed Murad

Mohamed Murad Mutahar is passionate about contributing to society and helping youth by empowerment programs and development activities. He attainted his Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration in Marketing & Management Information system from the American University of Sharjah (UAE) in 2006 and during his university times, leaded one of AUS cultural clubs organizing several activities for university students. He worked at Samsung SDS in Dubai for a year and then joined the family business in Sana’a in the Oil & Gas Industry.
He is a young businessman and a board member of the Yemeni Business Club and is a member of the Chamber of Commerce. Currently he’s also the CEO of BAM Oil & Gas Services Co. and is the Managing Director at the Konzept IT & Business Solution Ltd.
In 2009, after reading a UN report on poverty in Yemen, his social responsibility and will to contribute to societal progress led him to establish and chair Hemmat Shabab (Youth Endeavour) Foundation for Development, a youth-led initiative created with the aim of surveying and providing means of sustenance and self development for poor families in rural areas. The CSO has the vision to present a positive Arab youth model full of innovation, and produced video clips that were broadcasted by established TV channels like MBC. The videos aimed at propagating positive values and sending across the Arab world that Yemeni youth are talented, hardworking and opportunities seekers.
Mohamed Murad was nominated to be a speaker by Chatham House, a UK Think tank, during the Friends of Yemen Conference (March 2013) in view of his work as a Yemeni youth organization leader.

Wlaa Esam

Wlaa Isam is specialist networks and information security, researcher and developer of Arabic content on the Internet.
He obtained a B.Sc in Information Technology and has several international certificates from companies such as Microsoft, Citrix and VMware. Wlaa currently works as IT officer at the Danish Refugee Council Organization.
He aims at raising the technology information level among the Arab nation and to assist them in the spreading of a scientific renaissance.
Wlaa trained more than 6,000 student on Networks and Information Security. Most of Wlaa’s interests are related to networking and hardware. He authored more than 850 articles and produced over 200 videos in full HD on the Internet.. He spends most of his time reading, studying and working.

Maryam Alkubati

Maryam Alkubati is a 23 years old who recently graduated from Malaysia, University Utara Malaysia with a first class degree in Information Technology majoring in information management. Working with one of the leading liquefied natural gas companies in Yemen as a contracts Administrator and recently earned a Masters scholarship to further her study in the field of International Relations in Japan.
One of the first two Yemeni's to bring an educational gold medal to Yemen in 2006 at an environmental project Olympiad in Turkey (inepo 14th).Likewise, participated in many other events such as the inter-collegiate debate in 2010 by the British council between all Universities in Sana'a. Also represented Yemen in the Student and Women Leadership program(SUSI) in the University of Minnesota, USA in 2011. She had volunteered with Science and Technology University in implementing many ideas projects as community service and continue to do so with nonprofit organizations in Malaysia such as SIFE and AIESEC as well as the US embassy in Sana'a. She is very interested in self-development which is why she had attended many workshops and training in areas such as negotiation skills, proposal writing/team workshop, debate course, and self-development training among many others. She is highly interested in contributing to make Yemen a better place and hope to do so by using my skills and knowledge to help in the development of my society.

Mohammed Akkar

Mohammed Akkar is a businessman. He holds a bachelor degree in Computer Science from the Bangalore University with Distinction class. He was given awards for the Best Outgoing Student and the Best International Student in Bangalore in 2008. Mohammed was part of the Microsoft Talent Incubation Program and was a former Microsoft Engineer.
He describes himself as an entrepreneur by nature and was in fact the founder of several projects. Mohammed founded the English Masters Institute Bangalore. In Yemen, he was the founder of the Hadhramout Institute of IT, the largest IT training Center in Eastern Yemen partnering with major IT giants like Microsoft and Cisco.
Mohammed is also the founder and CEO of ClickApps, a software company based in Yemen and KSA. He frequently travels between Yemen and Saudi Arabia, meeting with people from different backgrounds such as entrepreneurs, investors and IT experts, to discuss and plan about IT outsourcing in Yemen as a feasible and promising business model. He plans on spending the following ten years building a strong industry of IT outsourcing in Yemen as a factor that will pave the way towards a stronger economy in the country.

Akram Al-Sharjabi

He is currently the deputy director of projects management at the 70th district which is under the umbrella of the capital secretariat.
His professional life started since he was twelve, when he worked in the summer period gaining thus technical and artistic skill since his childhood that have helped him overcome challenges while he grew up.
Akram has his own personal projects which he carefully selects the projects to carry out, making sure they are unique and remarkable. One of his work experience consisted in the execution of architectural work such as the doors of the Saleh Mosque in the capital. Akram was received numerous certificates for achievement and creativity from project supervisors that testify to his ability to take on challenges and determination.
One of the priorities for Akram in every project he carries out is the need to focus on the humanitarian perspective to it. He believes that if you are careless of humanity you cannot achieve anything nor progress; for this reason Akram is eager to link between freedoms, equality and spreading peace to the everyday needs people have.
He is an optimistic person and he tries to take advantage of the present for the building of the future. His motto is ‘He make work with what we have, there is no limitation to our abilities.

Rafat Al-Akhali

Rafat Ali Al-Akhali earned his Bachelor degree of Applied technology in information systems from SAIT Polytechnic in
Calgary, Canada. He then worked with IBM Canada for 4 years managing accounts of major corporations such as Sony and
Astrazeneca. He then moved to Montreal where he earned his Masters in Business Administration (MBA) degree from Ecole des
Hautes Etudes Commerciales (HEC) Montréal.
Rafat then worked as a Senior Consultant with ricewaterhouseCoopers in Canada, where he helped local government departments and private sector companies in the fields of IT Strategy, IT Governance, and Project Management.
He moved back to Yemen in 2011 and worked in the field of economic development with one of USAID's projects in the
country,before joining Apex Consulting.
Rafat recently earned his second Masters degree after being awarded a Chevening-Weidenfeld scholarship to study a Masters
in Public Policy (MPP) at the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford. As part of the MPP program, Rafat
finished an internship this summer at the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Geneva where he was part of the team managing
the accession process of several countries including Yemen, Afghanistan, and Algeria to the WTO.
In addition to his professional career, Rafat has been active in the field of youth development since 2004. He is the Co-
Founder and Chairman of Resonate! Yemen, a non-profit foundation that specializes in the field of engaging youth in public
policy in Yemen. He has represented Yemen as a speaker in many events around the world, most recently at the IMF Youth
Dialogue in Washington, DC. He also contributes regularly in a number of specialized blogs and research centers as an
analyst and a writer in the field of Yemen's political economy analysis.

Fekri Al-Muafa

Fekri Al-Muafa is the Business development Manager in Small & Micro Enterprise promotion Service Subsidiary of the Social fund for Development , supporting three economic areas A) the value chain development, B ) Business development Services C) Entrepreneurship , graduated as first rank with excellent degree in Computer Networking 2005 , in mid-2013 he got the MBA degree in projects management from Sikkim manipal university, Fekri is specialized in the Value chain development projects , he is one of four certified trainers in Yemen in the Value chain studies , he has many international training courses in economic growth interventions for the private sector development, Fekri represents Yemen many times in the biggest business to business fairs in the world in Europe for the Yemeni handicraft sector export , also he is leading the registration of Yemen in the World fair trade organization with many donors for the handicraft sector. Fekri participated in many sectors studies locally and internationally as a value chain officer such as coffee , honey , wheat , fish , handicrafts and agriculture products for many donors international and local, which transferred to successful economic development programs with SMEPS.

Hamdan Al-Zeqri

Hamdan Al-Zeqri is a cultural linguist mediator. After initially pursuing a degree in the field of pharmacy, circumstances led him to study and work for a completely different field. He is currently an interpreter and cultural mediator in different private and public institutions in Florence Italy after obtaining a certificate for Italian as a Second Language from the University of Siena. He is one of the few Arabic-Italian interpreters certified by EU and has ongoing work experiences in courts interpretations and mediations. Hamdan is presently engaged in different projects; among other things he teaches Arabic to Italian students and works in a company for the preparation of precision and aero special equipment by chemical methods. Hamdan also enjoys being a bridge between different worlds and so contribute to the cultural and ideological understanding of individuals from different backgrounds. He is passionate of books, poetry and self development in general as well as volunteering and being a helping hand in his community.

Safaa Al-Aghbari

Safaa Al-Aghbari is an owner of a micro-financed project that started from home and became a well-know local brand. She found herself in culinary art and creative snacks designing. She is a handicraft professional and her products were displayed in several bazaars. One of the hobbies she enjoys is crafting candles and designing them in various shapes. She got her bachelor’s degree in English language in 2013. Safa has also attended a business women training in trans-formative Marketing in addition to attending and participating in charitable and youth bazaars. She is interested in voluntary work and community service, and so she constantly participates in different youth initiatives such as “We Can Change”. She is passionate about everything related to decoration and designing as she tends to find herself redecorating everything around her.

Mohammed Mahdi

Mohammed Mahdi works as an investment manager in one of the key companies in the semi-government sector. He worked for a long time in consulting, governmental, administration reform, monitoring and evaluation, projects, programs management and building strategies.
He is supporting many youth invites and NGO’s in Yemen and UK such as YLDF, Hemmat Shabab in Yemen and Islamic Society in UK; moreover he is a founder and a board member for many local NGOs and Private companies such as Reach Foundation
He worked in many projects in Governmental reform in different countries such as India, Bangladesh, Tanzania and Yemen. Furthermore he worked with multinational companies in UAE, UK, Iraq and Jordan. He managed more than 27 local projects for the World Bank, GIZ, IFC and other donors in all over Yemen
He obtained his studies in Jordan and gets his master degree in project management from UK.
After more than 9 years working with several national and international entities he decided to move to the semi government sector due to the national crises because he believes that he can make a positive effect due to his accumulative experiences and knowledge.